


Storm of War

by ThisIsRosieC



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gen, M/M, World War I, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:58:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisIsRosieC/pseuds/ThisIsRosieC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of ficlets about various pairings dealing first with WWI & WWII, heavy emphasis on rain and storms because they were written for a prompt about storms during a party on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Somewhere in the French countryside, two men were huddled together, each clutching the other’s hand to the point of pain, but neither willing to relinquish their hold on the other.

Ordinarily this would have been cause for strange looks, reprimands, and possibly even dismissal from their posts, but as water poured down from the heavens, erasing any semblance of dryness or not muddiness from the company's minds, and the shells rained down around them, each man was far more concerned with saving himself. 

As the First World war raged around them, John and Sherlock held each other, needing the continued reassurance that the other was still there.

Before long the captain of their battalion was passing through, preparing the troupes for the German attack that would surely follow soon. Even as they stood to attention, rifles at the ready, their shoulders were pressed together. 

The hail of enemy fire calmed, and as the soldiers of their regiment readied themselves to go over the top, the two men shared one final look, never able to share what could always be their final kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

Whenever it rained- and it rained a lot on London those four years long years between 1914 and 1918, Mycroft couldn’t help but think about the two men he loved more than anything, who were undoubtably out being soaked somewhere not too far away.

First he was thankful. Thankful for the fact that Greg had let him use his influence to place him in a training camp in Dover, training new recruits and more importantly not fighting over in France. He was thankful that at the end of a day of exercises in the rain, Greg would at least be able to get somewhat dry in the instructors barracks, and wouldn’t spend all night in the wet, staying wet until the sun was warm enough to dry him.

His thankfulness couldn’t last long though, and his thoughts invariably strayed to his brother. His dear little brother, who he’d tried so hard to place somewhere in the logistical support back in London, somewhere Sherlock would be safe. When his brother, in a strange display of patriotism had insisted on enlisting, Mycroft had attempted to place him in a safer position, as he had done with his lover, but his brother’s stubbornness had won out, and he was somewhere in France.

When the sun shone, or there was only a light cloud cover, Mycroft managed to stay optimistic. Then he could remember Sherlock’s talent for survival, how he valued himself too much to attempt any ridiculous heroics, how he was too smart to get himself killed.

When it rained, Mycroft’s head was filled with images of mud and washed out trenches, of enemy fire raining down and craters filled with septic water. When it rained Mycroft was reminded of all the ways other than enemy fire that a soldier could die, and he saw his brother’s feet rotting away from gangrene, or coughing himself to death, ill with untreated pneumonia, or slowly dying from dehydration as he refused to drink the unsafe water.

The government official forced himself to work on, the world couldn’t stop just because he was worried, but every time it rained he redoubled his efforts in finding an end to the war, knowing that his brother would only ever really be safe once he was back home.


	3. Chapter 3

They met in a cafe on their respective days off mere weeks before Sally shipped out. It had been a chance meeting, but it seemed to Anthea to be the sort of chance meeting that the songs sing about but that no one ever has.

Desperate to know each other better, they spent every one of their limited free moments together those few short weeks. Then, just as Anthea was realized just how much she cared about the other woman, Sally was on a boat to France with the first nursing corps to leave and Anthea’s job as a secretary didn’t seem to fill nearly as many hours as it had before.

To her surprise, a letter arrived in the mail barely weeks after their separation. It was short, and there were absolutely no details, but Sally had been safe enough and well enough to write, and Anthea’s hope was restored.

Over the next four years, the two women would write hundreds of letters to each other, falling irrevocably in love and continually reassuring each other that they were still safe.

Sometimes letters were lost though, and in those times Anthea was over come with worry. When more time than usual passed without a message from the nurse her head was filled with images of artillery raining down, exploding a medical tent and Sally with it. When it rained, Anthea saw Sally soaking wet and covered in blood, working on despite the cold, starting to cough and dismissing it, until finally all Anthea could see when she closed her eyes was Sally’s face pale as she coughed herself to death somewhere in France.

Another letter would come eventually, and Anthea would sleep calmly for a night or two, but then the quiet patter of rain on her rooftop would return, and the images would continue to burn into her eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so a nurse is pretty far from a police sergeant, but in my mind Sally would have wanted to do whatever she could to help with the war effort, and would want to be as close to the front lines as possible.


	4. Chapter 4

Before the war, Harry had been outgoing and charming.

When she returned home from her four years as a nurse, she was a changed woman.

No longer social and talkative, she’d turned in onto herself, refusing to share whatever burden she carried with the world. They say time heals all, but even time seemed unable to completely ease her pain.

Before, she had had her pick of husbands, but after she refused all suitors point blank, eventually not even hearing out their offers or tolerating their presence. Instead, to her family’s dismay, she devoted her life to nursing.

In public she was the image of a sober and responsible, if sad, matron nurse in one of the nations most prestigious hospitals, and only her brother saw her slow descent into alcoholism.

At first it was just when there was thunder, and John understood that. It sounded too much like shells to ever be comfortable again. As time progressed though her drinking, always well hidden, became more and more frequent, her need to flee whatever memories haunted her increasing.

It was only on her death bed, some forty years of sadness later, that Harry confessed to her brother what had left her so scared.

“Her name was Clara,” she said quietly, “and she was the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met. She died two weeks before we shipped home, and I didn’t know how to live without her.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've moved on to the WWII ficlets now :)

When the Air Raid sirens sounded, Mycroft’s mind always jumped to his lover. Rushing to the bunkers was a routine struggle now, and he was free to worry about Greg’s safety. 

Greg, despite Mycroft’s desperate pleas against it, had joined the Home Guard when informed he was too old to serve in the main army, and due to his past experience as an instructor and as a police officer, he had been promoted to chief of organizations for the nation’s capital city. He should have been safe in that position, but he refused to not serve actively with his men.

Every time a bomb fell Mycroft couldn’t help but see Greg being blown up, or crushed by a falling building, or burning to death as he tried to save someone from a flaming house, or any number of the other ways he could have been injured.

When the Air Raid sirens sounded, Greg’s mind separated into two compartments.

The first was entirely practical: organize the men, protect the city and it’s population as well as they could.

The second, locked away in the back of his head, was devoted to worrying: He worried that Mycroft was visiting the palace and the Germans would finally hit it. He worried that Mycroft was at the Houses of Parliament, and that he would be blown up there, or that a fire would force him into the Thames where he would drown in the cold water. He worried that Mycroft was in his car, and wouldn’t make it to an air raid shelter.

When the sirens sounded signaling the end of the air raid, the men would go on with their jobs, but never truly stop worrying until they walked through the door of their flat and found the other safe for another night.


	6. Chapter 6

Huddled together in the Baker Street underground station, listening to the bombs thunder down onto their beloved London, John and Sherlock couldn’t help but remember the trenches of France, nearly thirty years earlier.

As they sat in silence, pressed together and hands clasped discreetly under Sherlock’s coat, it was as if they had never left the mud and cold and terror behind. In those moments, when the sound of the bombs seemed to grow in their ears and they remembered the all consuming panic that had been the German artillery attacks, the fear that next shell would fall on their section of the trench, that the look they were sharing would be their last, in those moments fear was all they could feel.

The people coughing, the children crying, even the sounds of sirens were unable to break into their shared nightmare, the fear that they would wake and find themselves back in the mud, that it hadn’t ended and the past twenty-something years had all been a dream.

When the sirens signaling the end of the raid sounded and the people around them began working towards the exits, their hands would squeeze tightly one last time before they pulled each other up and made their way home, together and safe for another day.


	7. Chapter 7

Jim knew that his right hand man and lover of nearly twenty had served as a Colonel during the First World war, but the other man had never spoken of his experiences and Jim had never asked.

It wasn’t until the first air raids of the blitz, when the sniper had a full on flashback as the bombs started falling and the noise became overwhelming.

In the darkness of the shelter, once he had calmed enough to speak clearly again, Sebastian began to talk. He spoke of the artillery fire in France, of all the men he’d lost and of all the good men he’d seen broken beyond repair. He spoke of the desperate feeling of inaction, as he forced the troupes forward, into the falling shells and to their deaths, because to go back would have meant death to entire nations. He spoke, as the bombs slowed, of his baby sister, his beautiful Clara, who’d insisted on serving as a nurse, and who’d died two weeks before the armistice in one final German attack.

Throughout the night and his tale, Jim could only sit beside him and hold him tight, listening and wishing he could share the pain.

As the left the shelter, walking out into the light rain of early dawn, Sebastian turned to the smaller man, and with a nervous smile took his hand.


	8. Chapter 8

Anthea wasn’t sure if she was more worried with Sally during the air raids or without her.

When they were together, waiting it out in the air raid shelter closest to their flat, she knew that Sally hadn’t already been killed, but she was also stricken with panic about her own inability to do anything about the flashbacks. After her time as a nurse during the First World war her girlfriend naturally had bad memories, but the intensity of her reaction to the sound of bombs had been completely unexpected. As it was, all she could do was hold her close and hope that it wouldn’t prove to be too much.

When they weren’t together though, when they were working or out when the sirens sounded, then Anthea was unable to see anything except her lovely Sally alone in a shelter somewhere, with no one to tell her it was going to be ok, or worse still caught out in the streets and dying.

Either way, Anthea’s predominant memories of the blitz would never be the bombs exploding outside or the fires that ravaged the city. They would always be of her Sally, falling apart in her arms while she was unable to help.


	9. Chapter 9

As the war approached, and then finally reached their English towns, John had worried about how his sister would manage. Surely if thunderstorms had been enough to trigger serious mental instability, who knew what actual bombs would do to her?

To his surprise Harry seemed in a better state of mind than she had been since before the first war. Not only was she still fiercely devoted to her day job as a nurse, she also joined a volunteer corps of nurses who took care of victims out on the streets during the air raids.

Most nights she had barely made it through the door of to her flat, soaking wet from the rain and the fire hoses, before she was changed back into her day uniform and off to the hospital for her shift. 

At the time Harry’s manic need to work had confused him, but years later when she shared the secret that had plagued her for most of her life, John understood. He knew then that Harry had, in an act of epic selflessness, wanted to save everyone she could, so that no one else had to loose their love as she had lost Clara.


End file.
